Tag: Three Star Film Review
The latest three-star film review from THEGAYUK.
-
FILM REVIEW: Kink, The no-holds-barred documentary on Kink
KINK.com is the largest producer of online BDSM porn movies in the USA and was started by Peter Ackworth, a Brit, from his Dorm Room at school in the UK in 1997. Now based in an enormous defunct Armory Building in San Francisco with many of the original facilities untouched as they make prefect sets for a lot of the perverse activity that now fills the building.
Kink produce movies for the 30 odd different sites they now operate and they cover the whole Bondage and Sado Masochism spectrum from slave training, rope bondage, femdom, gay public Sex, bondage gangbang, female domination, submissive women, lesbian bondage, shemales, naked wrestling, pissing, and sex machines etc etc. And in this no-holds-barred documentary you get to witness several of the extreme films being made …. I hope the participants were acting in part at least because what they allowed their bodies to be subjected too looked awfully painful from where I was sitting.
Filmmaker Christina Voros set out to go behind the mystique of the industry and as she is being shown around the building there is a hilarious scene where she cannot make herself heard above the din coming from the other end of the floor, Ackworth explains there is an orgy underway… not something you hear every day. She interviews several of the directors who, with the odd exception, are very matter of fact about their work and how they want to simply be the best in their genre. Occasionally one will try to intellectualize what they are about, but when they tried to align this to an art form, they get twisted up in more knots than the models on set.
There is also something rather wholesome about the big family atmosphere that permeates throughout the whole company… and it is rather fascinating to watch the directors and management have their monthly meeting to discuss their success. Why they ask, have the ratings for ‘Divine Bitches’ soared whilst ‘Electo Sluts’ is on the decline? Why indeed, but evidently there are fashions and trends that must be watched even in the sex industry.
The fly on the wall approached worked well and Ms Voros allowed us to witness it all without narration and more importantly, without judgement. Was it shocking? In parts, yes but not the graphic sex but more the aggressive bondage parts in particular. Did we learn anything? Well, yes… thanks to a Dominatrix we know how to stand on an erect penis in stiletto heels without causing any pain. Was it entertaining? To an extent, but it is essentially one big Advertorial for the Kink sites, which lessens its impact and certainly its importance as a general essay on the S + M industry. Would we recommend it? Certainly if you want to be reminded how boring your own sex life really is.
One our favourite anecdotes was when one of the models had just finished a very intensive hardcore slave/submission movie and dressed in his white terry robe he walked into the main office and was politely asked how his scene had gone. He replied very matter-of-fact “I got f***ed good”. And there you have it.
by Roger Walker-Dack
-
FILM REVIEW | Map To The Stars
★★★ | Map To The Stars
When the Hollywood limo driver asks his mysterious disfigured young passenger where she has come from she answers ‘Jupiter’ meaning the small town in Florida. It could however easily been the planet though as the girl is obviously extremely odd, and this is a David Cronenberg movie after all.
Agatha is back in California after being incarcerated after trying to kill her kid brother in a house fire. Now a young adult she is out to find Benjie her brother an obnoxious 13-year-old successful movie star in the vein of Justin Bieber, who has just spent the summer in rehab trying to kick his habits. Their father is a celebrity self-help guru, who mixes massage with lashings of Freud, and their highly-strung mother is trying to keep herself and the family together by acting as Benjie’s manager, and at the same time praying that their well-kept secret about the mentally unstable Agatha never leaks out.
Meanwhile elsewhere in this tale about the narcissistic and greed of movie land, Havana a fading middle-aged star is desperate for a role in a remake of a film that originally starred her abusive mother. When she fires the latest in a long line of personal assistant, or ‘chore whores’ as she calls them, her good friend Carrie Fisher hooks her up with a weird new girl in town who she had met online. When Havana learns of Agatha’s burns she sees that as good omen having lost her own mother in a fire, and gives her the job. Eventually, Havana is offered the film role, albeit by default, and when she is back in the studio it gives Agatha access to hook up with her brother and prey on his insecurities to worm her way back into his life.
Throughout the film, all manner of ghosts appear with disquieting regularity adding to both Benje’s and Havana’s already troubled psyches and undermines their attempts at trying to keep a grasp on their sanity. It’s one of the perverse elements of this intriguing very odd drama that seems morbidly obsessed with the past.
It’s the first movie that Cronenberg, a Canadian, has made in the USA and it is beautifully shot in a very sunny and glamorous California which somehow makes the heart-rending tragedy at the end seem even darker. Written over 20 years by Bruce Wagner a limo driver turned screenwriter (like the one in the movie) who obviously has something of an inside track on the seamier side of Tinseltown.
It gave Julianne Moore her second big role of 2014 and her sublime performance as Havana always on the edge of totally losing it won her the Best Actress Award at Cannes Film Festival in the summer. It also reunites her with the immensely talented Mia Wasikowska (they played mother and daughter in ‘The Kids Are Alright’) and this time she is superbly creepy as the deranged Agatha. Cronenberg reunites with Robert Pattinson who starred as the executive being driven around Manhattan all day in ‘Cosmopolis’, and this time it is he who plays the limo driver that Agatha all but forces into a relationship.
Olivia Wilde as the mother, John Cusack as the father, and a remarkable young TV actor called Evan Bird who was pitch perfect as Benjie the spoilt child star rounded out the cast.
Like all Cronenberg’s work, this is a fascinating movie and even though it is hard to actually like, it is well worth seeing just for Ms Moore’s exquisite performance alone.
-
FILM REVIEW | Global Warming
Do not be put off by this ominous title as this is not an environmental doomsday prediction about the state of our planet, but simply a selection of four boy-lit short movies where the action sometimes gets steamy.
★★★
The first is You Can’t Curry Love which is the story of a young Asian gay man who cannot get a boyfriend back home in the UK, but when he flies to India on a business trip he falls in love with the very first man he meets and who happens to be Sunil the handsome front desk clerk at his hotel. This too-cute-for-words tale also serves as an infomercial with Sunil preaching on how far gay rights have/have not progressed in his country. They wrap up this happily-ever-after very slight story with one of those camp song and dance numbers that are the mainstay of every Bollywood movie.
Daddy’s Big Girl is a less than satisfactory tale of a sad overweight girl desperately trying to reconcile with her self-centred man-hungry father who is only interested in being a ‘daddy’ to the stream of young gym trainers he beds.
The third movie in this compilation, and probably the best, is Foreign Relations. Shy Tom is assigned to bunk up with handsome Greek Nikos on a group vacation trip. Unsurprisingly Tom totally falls for Nikos even though he has no idea if his new friend shares his preference for boys. By the time this sweet tale ends you are hoping for Tom’s sake that he does.
The fourth and final movie is Performance Anxiety which is the most amusing one in the quartet. It is the tale of two straight actors who have been cast to play gay in a movie. Both are naturally cute to boot and unnecessarily are as worried as hell. They really needn’t be, as they both would fit in extremely well on our team any day. Or night.
All written and directed by filmmaker Reid Watererand filmed with a cast of engaging young actors, this enjoyable new collection would make a perfect date movie. It may not warm the globe, but it will probably get you hot under the collar at times.
-
FILM REVIEW | Appropriate Behaviour
★★★ | Appropriate Behaviour
For Shirin, a twentysomethingyear old angst ridden fashionable Brooklynite, life is mess.
We don’t need to feel sorry for her, as she does that so well herself. She is reluctantly breaking up with Maxine her girlfriend and leaving the home they shared with little more than a strap on dildo. She is moving into a shabby squalid apartment with a pair of pretentious ‘artists’. Her nice middle class Iranian parents, who have no idea about her sexual identity, would like her to marry a nice traditional Persian boy. Her over-achieving brother is a doctor, whilst Shirin wastes her journalism degree and just flits from one menial job to another. And if that is not enough, she is broke too.
The trouble is Shirin doesn’t know what she wants. She starts dating men again, whilst at the same time tries all she can do to woo a reluctant Maxine back. Her attempts at ‘finding herself’ make for some of the funnier moments in this comic story that is based loosely on the life of Desiree Akhavan who not only directed and wrote it, but is playing Shirin herself too. It’s her performance that makes this piece come alive even with its gaping holes. When Shirin attempts a three-way with a neurotic couple, or has a hook-up from a website, or makes a disruptive visit to a gay rights discussion group it is outrageously funny.
Ms. Akhavan has written herself some delicious one-liners.
Her scenes with her parents are less successful as it’s hard to believe that such worldly educated people would never have a single inkling as to what their free-spirit bisexual daughter is all about.
The story peters out with little conclusion other than the fact that Ms Akhavan is an immensely talented performer and is a powerful presence on the screen. I am sure that we will see a great deal more of this future star.
-
FILM REVIEW | I Am Yours
★★★ | I Am Yours
Newbie Norwegian filmmaker Iram Haq’s new drama is based on her own life and her struggle as a woman caught between two cultures. Struggling actress Mina, a second-generation immigrant, is an attractive 27-year-old divorcee who shares custody of her 6-year-old son with her ex-husband, a successful architect, and his new wife who can barely contain their disapproval of Mina and her rather flighty life.
Even her hypocritical mother, the matriarch in their traditional Pakistani family, cannot stop criticising her daughter every time they meet. ‘What a fine man, imagine if he were still a member of this family’ she intones about her ex-son in law. Mina’s only joy, asides from her son, comes from her all her sexual liaisons with a slew of unsuitable men. When they sense her neediness, they all use this an excuse to manipulate and abuse her.
This comes to a head when she meets Jesper a Swedish filmmaker visiting Oslo. He is quite the charmer and so Mina chooses to overlook that he is both self-centered and extremely passive/aggressive when it comes to the relationship that they fall into too quickly. She goes to great lengths to please Jesper in whom she has invested all her hope even to the point that doing so may jeopardise the one stable thing in her life i.e. her relationship with her son.
The same time that Mina eventually appreciates that Jesper can not/will not make any commitment to a relationship especially when he realises he has to compete with a 6-year-old child for her attention, her mother comes to visit cap in hand to admit that her own perfect marriage is not what it seemed after all.
It’s an impressive first feature from 38-year-old Haq and was selected to be Norway’s’ Official Submission for a Best Foreign Picture Oscar Nomination. She cast the movie very well with convincing performances from her two leads: Amrita Acharia a Norwegian/Ukranian/Nepalese actress best known for playing Irri in the Game of Thrones and Ola Rapace who was in Skyfall but is better known for being the ex-husband of Noomi Rapace.
-
FILM REVIEW | Big Eyes, A Radical Departure For Burton
★★★ | Big Eyes
In a rather radical departure from his last few very edgy movies acclaimed director Tim Burton has opted to make a biopic about Walter Keane the infamous plagiarist who in the 1950s claimed that his wife’s populist art was his own work. It’s a colourful lightweight drama that never gets dark even when Keane’s trickery is exposed, thanks mainly to the entertaining performances of its stars Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams.
The movie opens with a blond-wigged Margaret Ulbrich leaving her unseen husband and taking just Jane her young daughter, a suitcase and a handful of her artwork. Her destination is San Francisco’s new trendy hotspot North Beach but getting a job as a newly single mother is not easy and so she supplements her income at the furniture factory where she works by setting up shop at an outdoor art fair. Her signature style of painting forlorn looking children with enormous soulful eyes doesn’t attract many sales but it does attract the attention of the garrulous older man in the next booth who is pitching his pictures of street scenes of Paris.
A compulsive womaniser, Walter Keane turns on the charm for Margaret and she, still feeling vulnerable and lonely after her recent separation, agrees to go out on a date with him. The couple hardly know other when Margaret receives a letter from her husband’s lawyer threatening to sue for custody of their child, and so she accepts Walter’s spontaneous marriage proposal to safeguard her chances of holding onto Jane.
After they return from a romantic wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii, Walter starts hawking their art around town and despite the fact he is a sharp fast-talking salesman, the best deal he can come up with is renting a couple of walls in a Jazz club to display their work. His Montmartre street scenes are totally overlooked but when the club patrons spot Margaret’s soulful eyed children and want to buy them all, he claims that they are all his own work too.
Margaret is somewhat infatuated with her new husband who she credits with giving her a new lease of life, so when she discovers the lie she goes along it. She is persuaded by Walter that having a man as the artist, is the only way to successful sell the art. He also manages to charm everyone into helping him make this new venture so successful including the San Francisco Examiner reporter Dick Nolan who plants stories about Walter and the art in his newspaper’s society pages.
As their success explodes all Margaret has to do is stay at home and churn out more paintings in complete secrecy as even Jane, now a teenager, must not be allowed to know the truth. When Walter hits on the notion of printing cheap poster copies of Margaret’s kitsch art the public cannot enough of them, and one of the very few dissenting voices is that of the New York Times Art Critic John Canady who denounces them to the world.
When his sheer greed turns Walter into a real menace, then Margaret finally packs up her suitcases once again and flees with her daughter, but this time to Hawaii. It takes Walter a year to track her down and when he calls her bluff about exposing him as a fraud, she finally goes public with the fact that she is the real artist. A supremely over-confident Walter immediately denounces these claims in the Examiner, but for once he has misread Margaret who is no longer frightened of him, and so she promptly sues him and the newspaper for slander.
The judge clears the newspaper of any liability at the Trial but when the rest of the proceedings degenerate into a public squabble between the couple, he deems the only way to resolve the true authorship of the Art is that both of the Keanes paint a picture there and then.
The chemistry between Waltz as the obnoxiously charming con-man and Adams as the pretty put-upon vulnerable Margaret with her fine Christian morals is what makes this story seem so believable even when it’s hard to even begin to conceive that all this appalling art could have resulted in amassing such a fortune. Burton makes this adaption of this true story an incisive commentary on how early 1960’s society even in a consumer-driven California still had these impenetrable expectations of what women could do.
This easy going movie will hardly rank as one of director Burton’s best but it is reasonably entertaining and easy on the eye and to that end we should give credit to the design team for the locations, the sets and costumes that were all so perfect down to the last detail.
-
FILM REVIEW | Inherent Vice, Expecting Boogie Nights, you will be disappointed
★★★ | Inherent Vice, Expecting Boogie Nights, you will be disappointed
The reclusive writer Thomas Pynchon is known for his dense and complex novels which he has never allowed to be adapted into movies, until now that is. When ‘Inherent Vice’ his seventh novel was published in 2009 the dust jacket proclaimed that it was ‘part-noir, part-psychedelic romp’.
The piece is set in 1970 and unkempt Doc Spotello a Private Eye sporting big mutton chops and as usual in a dope-fuelled haze, is in his Gordetta Beach hangout when Shasta Fay Hepworth one of his ex-squeezes turns up unexpectedly to ask for his help. She wants him to track down her secret lover, big-shot land developer Mickey Wolfmann, who’s vanished. Shasta is worried that Mrs. Wolfmann who has her own lover, wants to commit her husband to a loony bin but before Doc can even start investigating, Shasta disappears too.
When Doc gets on the case he heads out to Channel View Estates, Wolfmann’s latest cheesy housing development, and en route pops into a sex parlor there looking for one of the owner’s bodyguards who he thinks will be able to help him. As he gets ready to leave Doc is knocked out, only to wake up much later next to the body of the dead bodyguard, a burly Nazi-loving biker, and he is instantly accused of murder by the cops.
Doc gets out of this particular mess as his old nemesis Det. ‘Bigfoot’ Bjornsen knows he is innocent but nevertheless he and the FBI press him into helping them locate Wolfmann and a missing musician Coy Harlington who they all want to talk to as well. And looming over everything is the ‘Golden Fang’ that Doc has been warned to avoid. What this is he is never quite sure, and neither are we. At first it appears it is maybe a blacklisted movie star’s personal sailing vessel, or one that belongs to an Indo-Chinese drug cartel. Or it may even be the name of a syndicate of tax-dodging dentists fronted by a coke-snorting Dr. Feelgood.
Both Wolfmann and Hartigan are found but by this time the plot is so convoluted that we have no chance of making head of tale of it unless we are as perpetually stoned as Doc is. What makes this ‘haze’ so enjoyable however is the inspired and zany delicious humor that is always a strength of Anderson’s films, plus some rather wonderful performances from a fine cast led by Joaquin Phoenix as Doc. Phoenix brings his hallmark manic manner to the role and is excruciatingly wonderful as he totally lives a part that is so tailor-made for him.
Fine turns too from Josh Brolin as Bigfoot, a barely recognisable Benicio Del Toro as a Lawyer, Owen Wilson (who is always happy when he is stoned) as Coy, and delightfully over-the-top performance by Martin Short as Dr Feelgood.
If like me you were expecting this to follow on from Anderson’s 1997 breakthrough movie the sensational ‘Boogie Nights’ set in this same period, you will be disappointed as it’s simply not in the same league. It is however still a joy to watch and appreciate his highly personal stylised approach to filmmaking as he revels in a period and culture that he has such empathy with. Just make sure you read the novel first, and maybe take a puff or two as well.
-
FILM REVIEW | The Interview
★★★ | The Interview
With the North Korean Government furious about the Hollywood comedy that dared to portray an assassination of their Supreme Leader, they hacked into Sony’s computers and scared the Studio to make them panic enough to withdraw the movie from all US screens before its release date on Christmas Day. Even President Obama pitched in to this unprecedented major public controversy, and so a few days later Sony relented and allowed the movie to be shown in a few theatres and online after all.
t’s not due in UK cinemas until February 6th but we had THEGAYUK’s Contributing Editor Roger Walker-Dack take a sneak preview to review the film and tell us if the fuss was really justified. Here is his report:-
If the North Korean Government hadn’t insisted on making this the most talked about movie this Christmas there is little doubt that this off-colour sophomoric comedy would have quickly passed through cinemas practically unnoticed by most of us. It’s crude and smutty humor that, like most movies that the actor James Franco is connected with these days, is overly obsessed with being ‘gay’, and it also relies heavily on his and the writers obvious fascination with anal matters too.
If you have been anywhere near a newspaper this past week you will know that this comedy is about a fictionalised attempt to assassinate Kim Jong-Un the Supreme Leader of North Korea. Mr. Jong Un felt so miffed at the idea that he may have had his people hack Sony’s computers and issue threats of dire consequences if the movie was shown. If only he had bothered to watch the film himself then I think if he would be outraged at anything, it would be much more about how the plot totally disintegrates towards the end and just sinks into a rather pathetic bloody battle giving the film a very unfunny finale.
Essentially its the story of a lightweight TV presenter Dave Skylark who fills his nightly talk show with ridiculous reality items but then one night the singer Eminem accidentally comes out as ‘gay’ and for once the show’s ratings soar. It whets the appetite of Adam the show’s producer who is desperate for more serious content, which they suddenly think, is possible when they discover in magazine that the North Korean Leader is a big fan of the show. He has refused interviews with the world’s press to date but agrees to grant one to his hero Dave Skylark. A fact that attracts the attention of the CIA who recruit both Dave and Adam with a request that they seize this unique opportunity to take the Leader out.
The plan almost fails before it begins when nice-but-dim Dave decides to do things his way when they arrive in Korea, and then he changes his mind completely anyway after a day of male bonding with his new ‘best friend’ the ‘Kate Perry’ loving Kim. Adam meanwhile does some ‘bonding’ of his own with their ferocious female guide Sook and afterwards together they plot to sabotage the rather innocuous interview that Leader’s handlers are insisting on.
The movie is a reuniting of Seth Rogan (who also is a co-director and co-writer with Evan Goldberg) and James Franco after their first, and much superior comedy ‘This Is The End’ in 2013. The two have great screen chemistry together but the lion share of the laughs is left to Rogan who is much more at home in these frat-boy comedies than his co-star. The one thing Franco is good at however is over-acting which suits him to a tee in his role of the eager-to-please tabloid TV presenter.
There are a few good laughs … mainly at the Korean’s expense in this silly uneven comedy … and compared to something that is really offensive like ‘Borat’ in the end this is tame stuff that will very soon be forgotten, and in the end we are much more likely to remember the drama surrounding it instead.
-
FILM REVIEW | St. Vincent: Grinning From Ear To Ear
★★★ | | St. Vincent: Grinning From Ear To Ear
Vincent with no visible regular means of support and with a not a single friend in the world other than Felix his rather mangy Persian cat, is a cantankerous old drunk. When Maggie a newly single mother and Oliver her 12-year-old son move into the house next door, things get off to bad start between them and him, and it looks like they will be added to the long list of people who Vincent loathes. Then one day when Oliver gets inadvertently locked out of his house when his mother is trapped at work, and Vincent becomes a reluctant babysitter.
Always desperately short of cash, mainly due to his very unsuccessful gambling habit, when Vincent realises that looking after Oliver every night after school will actually earn him some money, he signs up for the job albeit begrudgingly. However unbeknown to Maggie, Vincent sees no reason to change his normal routines and drags the boy around all his regular seedy and totally inappropriate haunts. When he discovers that the boy is being picked on at school he teaches Oliver how to break the bully’s nose, which to everyone’s surprise he successfully puts into practice the very next day.
There are two people in Vincent’s life that he actually likes. One is a pregnant Russian stripper called Daka, and the second is Sandy an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s who lives in a seniors centre. As the story unfolds it slowly becomes obvious why these women warrants special attention. Eventually, Vincent also starts to bond with his geeky charge and their relationship is really cemented when Oliver manages to change Vincent’s losing streak at the race track.
Center strand to the story is that at the Catholic School Oliver attends each of the pupils is encouraged to nominate a person from their everyday lives to be a Saint. Despite his drinking, gambling and hanging out with hookers, Vincent is Oliver’s choice for canonization which seems an unrealistic fit with the Catholic Church, but this is the movies after all.
This debut feature written and directed by newbie filmmaker Ted Melfi is purely a vehicle for the great comic actor Bill Murray who now specialises in playing old curmudgeons. He is unquestionably funnier than the movie itself, which although has some good comic moments, is just a little too sweet and syrupy which is not a good fit with Vincent’s grumpy personna.
Melissa McCarthy has very little to do as Maggie, Naomi Watts as Daka seems as uncomfortable as we are listening to her silly Russian accent, and Chris O’Dowd is painfully unfunny as the school priest.
However young Jaeden Lieberher playing Oliver puts in a fine performance and there was excellent chemistry between him and Mr Murray.
It’s not the laugh-out loud comedy it sets out to be, but it will have you grinning from ear to ear some of the time.
-
FILM REVIEW | Interstellar: Bigger Than It can handle, And What We Can Handle
★★★ | Interstellar
There’s a lot of hype surrounding the new film Interstellar, which opens on Friday.
It’s directed by Christopher Nolan, the man who brought us the billion-dollar grossing films (each!) The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Returns. He also brought us 2000’s smart and highly intellectual film Memento and 2010’s highly confusing Inception. Also upping the hype around Interstellar is that it stars recent Academy Award winners Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, multiple Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain, as well as Oscar winners Michael Caine, Ellen Burnstyn, and in an uncredited/unbilled but pivotal role in the film, Matt Damon. Also by the look of the trailer, it looks visually and experimentally stunning. It’s on the path to be this year’s Gravity.
Interstellar is a lot of things. But according to Nolan, it hinges on the provocative question of humanity’s place in the stars. Interstellar means ‘occurring or situated between stars,’ and that’s basically what the movie is all about. It’s also about Black Holes, distance galaxies, uninhabitable and habitable planets, spaceship travel, and what drives the plot is the relationship a father has with his daughter.
Set in the near future when an agricultural crisis has hit Earth and there is not enough food to eat and the population is slowly dying. The land is very dry and there are massive sandstorms that engulf the planet. With the possibility of the extinction of humans, a dangerous and daring mission takes place to look for planets outside of the universe where humans can move to, survive, and most importantly, reproduce. It’s a mission that goes above and beyond the barriers of time and space, defying not only gravity but inter-galaxy travel as well. It’s an experimental mission that’s not only very dangerous, but life altering as well.
Cooper (McConaughey) is a former test pilot and engineer who’s now a farmer because that is what is needed in this decaying, dry new world. The only crop that is left on earth is corn, so this is what he grows at his vast farm, with the help of his father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow) and his two children – teenage son Tom (Timothee Chalamet) and daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy). Cooper hears of some sort of experimental space project going on in his area, so he drives off attempting to find it, at the same time finding Murph in the back of the car when she was told to stay home. She’s as much of a space geek as her father.
They find the compound, or actually, the compound finds them, and they both get whisked into the underground bunker. It’s actually a fortress made up of scientists and engineers, led by Professor Brand (Caine). He leads the project for the search of a planet in perhaps another universe that can sustain the human race. A project which includes a newly built spaceship.
So Cooper (without the blessing of his daughter) and Brand’s scientist daughter Amelia (Hathaway) and two others blast off into space, into the darkness, on a mission that seems impossible. But what Cooper doesn’t know is that 13 other astronauts had previously attempted the mission, and all have not been heard from since. And to add drama to the story, Amelia was in love with one of them.
It’s the space mission (and Cooper and Murph’s relationship) that drives Interstellar. And what a drive it is. Nolan takes us into space and beyond like no other filmmaker has. We are transported into another universe, through black holes, to other planets. One planet has waves the size of the Empire State Building, while another is caked in ice, where they find one of the 13 astronauts alive – Dr. Mann (Damon). And this is when Coopers’ and Amelia’s mission strays off it’s course, in a detrimental way. One hour on this planet equals 20 years on Earth, so the more time spent there, the more time Cooper’s children grow up, and old, without him.
What Interstellar tries to do is use the magnitude and grandeur of space as a backdrop for exploring the relationships that Cooper has with his children, especially his daughter. It’s also about all kinds of things – our lives on earth, what will happen when our earth can no longer sustain us, who are are, and it makes us look at the relationships we have. It basically asks us to examine, all this, and more, in its 169 minutes. London-born Nolan successfully puts the audience into space, and McConaughey successfully makes us believe that he’s got the passion for being in space, but Interstellar leaves us mere mortals behind in a film that is a bit overwhelming, mind-bending, demanding and a bit confusing. And the sound quality is not the best, the music and noise at times drown out what the characters are saying in a few crucial scenes. And with two recent air space accidents in the last couple weeks, no one is really in a rush to get to space.
Written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, Interstellar is a movie bigger than it can handle, and what we can handle.